


If Ever There's a Tomorrow When We're Not Together

by TheLostSister



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Bullying, Sad Eleven | Jane Hopper, a possible s4 spoiler, i really don't know but read at your own risk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:42:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26805295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLostSister/pseuds/TheLostSister
Summary: El has a difficult day at school and really misses Hopper.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Jonathan Byers & Joyce Byers & Will Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Joyce Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper
Comments: 13
Kudos: 39





	If Ever There's a Tomorrow When We're Not Together

“After learning to speak, she traveled the world to spread her message. And along the way, changed the how the world perceived those like her with disabilities. And that is why I chose Helen Keller as my hero.”

There’s a round of applause and then Mrs. Davis says, “That was wonderful, Angela, truly wonderful. What an inspiring story. Okay, now let’s see who has to follow that.”

El sits quietly in the back row of the class hoping it’s not her. Not because she isn’t proud of who she’s chosen for her report, but because she’s incredibly nervous to speak in front of the whole class. She’s never done something like this before, and her stomach churns with anxiety. She’s gone over what she’s going to say all day in her head, probably a hundred times, but she’s still nervous.

Mrs. Davis looks down at a list on her desk and calls, “Jane.”

El’s heart starts beating a little faster. She tucks her hair behind her ears and takes a breath, picking up the board that holds the model of the cabin that Will and Joyce helped her make.

El approaches the front of the class and sets her project down on the table.

“For my hero, I- I chose my dad. And for my visual aid, I made a diorama of his house,” El begins.

“Diorama? More like diarrhea,” Angela pretends to whisper, though it’s loud enough for the entire class to hear.

“Quiet everyone. Be respectful,” the teacher reminds the class.

“This is my dad,” El continues. She looks down at the little clay figurine of Hopper and feels slight boost of confidence. “His name is Jim. And this is Mr. Fiddley. He’s a cat. He visited us every day-“

Angela’s hand shoots up and Mrs. Davis calls on her.

“Angela, any questions can wait until the end of the presentation.”

“Well, it’s just, I thought we had to do our presentations on _real_ heroes. Not our parents.”

There’s a sudden, familiar sting of tears behind El’s eyes. “My dad,” she interrupts, “is a _real_ hero.” She looks to her teacher again hoping for some support.

“Of course he is, Jane. And as a reminder, you were all free to choose any individual that is inspiring to you for this project. Now please, keep all _constructive_ criticism to yourself until the end of the presentations,” she continues, sternly looking in the direction of a few specific students.

“My dad isn’t here anymore because he died. He- he saved me and my friends from-” Her throat suddenly feels tight and she loses her words.

El pauses for too long, and she knows it.

“She had friends?” El hears someone whisper with a giggle.

“Shh,” Mrs. Davis hushes the class again.

The room is silent aside from someone rapidly tapping a pencil on their desk out of boredom. To El, the rhythmic tapping sounds like her heart beating so deafeningly loud that everyone in the room can surely hear it too. She looks back down to her diorama and the clay on Hopper’s face is melting off his body, dripping down into a puddle, and suddenly, Mr. Fiddley is melting too. She gasps quietly and blinks quickly, but they are both rapidly turning into piles of mush.

A hand touches her back and though it sounds like the voice underwater, El distantly hears, “Jane? Are you alright?”

El snaps her head up and remembers she’s standing in front of the entire class.

“Do you need a minute?” Mrs. Davis asks her softly.

El suddenly feels so grateful that her first ever oral presentation is at least in the class with her favorite teacher.

When “Jane Hopper” moved to the school, her obviously overprotective adoptive mother approached all of the teachers letting them know about Jane’s past as an abused foster child who was kept out of public school for nearly her entire life. Jane is also unfortunately still grieving over the tragic accident and loss of her adoptive dad that occurred earlier that year. Joyce had personally spoke to each of El’s teachers in hopes that they would understand that while El shouldn’t be considered special needs, there was bound to be some educational gaps because of her past and hopes they would be considerate of that.

And so far, Mrs. Davis is one of the only ones who actually has been.

El hears a few snickers in the background of the class again, and she gets the overwhelming urge to run out of the room and as far away from this stupid school as she could get. But instead, she just continues to stare at her diorama, only seeing now that nothing has changed; Hopper is all put back together just like he was when she walked up to the front of the class, complete with the tiny badge she made him on the chest of his blue jacket.

“Jane?” Mrs. Davis presses again.

El takes a breath and turns back to the class, her fingers anxiously gripping the edge of the table.

“My dad was a policeman,” she starts again. “He died saving me and my friends from a fire. Without him, I wouldn’t be alive and that is why I chose him as my hero.” With that, El picks her diorama up and walks back to her desk.

Mrs. Davis initiates a round of applause and finally, the rest of the class half-heartedly follows too. El’s cheeks are pink, and she feels way too hot.

Her report wasn’t long enough; she forgot almost everything she was going to say, and she knows that despite how much time she spent on it, she’s going to get a poor grade for it. She sits down at her desk and with one finger, idly strokes Mr. Fiddley’s clay figure. El finds herself wishing she was back home on that porch with him and Hopper right now. Even if it meant never leaving the cabin again, it would be better than this.

If only she had known.

Angela whispers something to Jake in the chair next to her, and they both look back at El and laugh. There have been many times that El wishes she still had her powers, and this is one of those moments. She envisions snapping the posts on Angela and Jake’s chair legs so that their desks and seats collapse, and they crash to the ground. She imagines how dumb they would feel with everyone laughing at _them_. She believes that that maybe, just maybe, if she concentrates hard it enough, it will actually happen.

But instead, El is left with nothing but a dull headache.

The last 30 minutes of class drag by so slowly that it feels like 3 hours. She pays no attention to anyone else’s presentation, but claps when the rest of the class does so.

Finally, the end of day bell rings, and El slowly collects her belongings, waiting for the rest of the students to clear out. She doesn’t want to have to walk past anyone to get out of the classroom. As much as she tries to keep to herself, there are a few kids who have been pretty ruthless since she got here.

Joyce tells her she just needs time to adjust to something new, but every day just seems harder than the one before it, and Joyce doesn’t know how truly awful school is going. Homework is a struggle and even when she puts hours of work into something, she never receives A’s, and often finds herself believing that she really is _stupid._

The only good thing to come of this is her diorama. She didn’t have any pictures of the cabin, so everything was constructed from memory. Regardless, El knows she did a pretty good job with the replication.

She picks it up off her desk and thinks about where she’s going to put it at home. She could make a spot for it on her dresser next to the only picture of her and Hop that she has; it’s one Jonathan took of them after the Snowball, also the night that she kissed Mike for the second time. In the photo, she has the biggest smile on her face, and Hopper actually looks pretty happy too.

Even though it was one of the best nights ever, she sometimes turns the picture around because it makes her a little sad.

El carefully sets the diorama back down for a moment to adjust her backpack and then heads for the hallway, thankful that at least it’s Friday. Hopefully by Monday, no one will care about how bad her presentation was.

El walks out into the hallway and nearly runs into Angela and Jake who are still standing near the classroom door.

“Maybe I should have did my report on our very own Helen Keller. Oh look, here she is now,” Angela giggles loudly, motioning with her hands when she sees El walk out of the classroom.

El rolls her eyes and turns to walk in the other direction. It will take her longer to get to the car, but at least she won’t have to pass them. She’s only a few steps away when suddenly a foot kicks out in front of her and trips her. With the diorama in her hands, El can’t properly catch herself and she crashes to the ground. The cabin smashes into pieces underneath her and scatters across the floor.

“Oops,” she hears Angela whisper.

Jonathan, who’s waiting at the end of the hallway near the door to go outside, sees the whole interaction. El stares at the pieces of her old life scattered across the ground just as helplessly as she watched her life fall apart 4 months ago.

“Why?” El finally looks up and asks softly.

“I’m sorry. I can’t understand you. What was that?”

“Why are you so mean?” El repeats slowly.

“It was just an accident,” Angela shrugs callously with a laugh.

But El knows that it wasn’t an accident at all.

“What are you gonna do about it anyway?” Jake taunts in challenge.

El’s emotions suddenly turn to rage, and she realizes that it’s worked before. Kali taught her how to channel her anger into power to make things happen.

El is still sitting on the ground, but she lifts her hand and concentrates hard in attempt to topple the lockers on the wall over, or just, to do _something,_ anything that would scare them away from bothering her for another day.

“Oh my god,” Angela scrunches up her face and says to Jake after a moment of watching her. “What a fucking weirdo.”

Jonathan has made his way back down the hallway now. He’s quickly and quietly picking up the pieces of El’s project. He catches what El is trying to do and knows it’s not going to work. And even if it did, it would only make things worse for her. He touches her hand and snaps her out of it.

“Are you okay?” Jonathan asks instead.

“Oh good. Your incestuous brother is here to save you.” Those rumors had started quickly due to how protective Jonathan was when they first started at the school, but El had never even actually understood what that meant.

“Come on ya little mute, don’t you have anything to say?”

“Let’s go,” Jonathan tells her simply, helping her stand up. El picks up her backpack and follows silently behind.

The couple continues antagonizing El until she is out of earshot.

“You alright?” Jonathan asks again when they make it to his car where Will is already waiting. It’s raining, which is a little relieving because the raindrops mask her tears well, even though she’s sure that Jonathan can tell that she’s crying.

But what’s new? She feels like she’s _always_ crying these days.

El gives a quick, single nod and climbs in the backseat.

“What happened?” Will turns around from the passenger seat to ask.

“I fell,” El sniffles with a shrug.

Will sees El’s destroyed diorama where Jonathan placed it on the back seat next to her and looks to his brother.

He silently confirms that there was a little more to the story and Will immediately understands. It seems like not a day goes by where El isn’t being bullied about something, the way she speaks, her clothes, not knowing what should be a simple answer for a high schooler, not knowing how to pronounce a word in their textbook, the list goes on. He would never admit to it out loud, but he’s secretly a little glad that for once, it’s not him. He’s made a few friends here, but he is mostly just ignored, and he’s quite okay with that.

Jonathan peeks in the rearview mirror to check on El a few times on the way home. She’s curled up and leaning against the window. He hates seeing her so defeated because of a few asshole kids, especially when he knows just how kind and strong-willed she used to be.

When they get home, El climbs out of the car and collects her project out of the back seat. Without a second look, she throws it in the trash bin next to the garage and heads inside, straight to her bedroom. She closes her bedroom door and immediately goes to her closet. She sinks to the floor and pulls out a box that she’s stashed under a blanket because she doesn’t like looking at it every day.

However, today she opens the flaps on the box, and on the very top, lays Hopper’s blue police jacket. Underneath it are a few other important things that she’s decided to keep of his, though El knows that Joyce has a lot more of his belongings in her bedroom too.

This particular jacket is extra special because it’s one of the few articles of clothing that still remains unwashed, leaving it with a hint of what Hopper and her old home smelled like. She doesn’t get it out very often for fear that one day, she will have rubbed it away and won’t be able to remember what it was like at all.

El holds it close to her body and buries her face against it. Unable to stop the tears from coming, she lays down on the floor and curls up with it in her arms. The embarrassment, the pent up frustration, the anger, and all the sadness of the past several months comes spilling out in near silent, gasping sobs. There was so much more she could have said about her dad today and all she managed to talk about was how he died.

“I miss you, Hop” El sobs out loud. “I really, really miss you,” she finds herself whimpering over and over again into the fabric.

She lays on the floor for awhile until she feels like she might actually fall asleep there. El forces herself to sit up and sees something else in the box of belongings. It’s a book that she doesn’t remember putting in there, though she knows that it for sure came from the cabin. It’s _The Complete Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,_ which was also one of the first books ever that Hopper read to her. Each night during the first winter they spent together, he would read her two, and sometimes if she could sweet talk him into it, three, stories a night.

El pulls the book out and it falls open in her lap like someone hand-picked a page for her to read. Soon she finds herself curled back up in Hopper’s jacket, book in hand, while drifting off to sleep on the floor. It’s almost as if she can hear him reading to her, almost as if his strong arms are wrapped around her right now while his comforting voice lulls her off to sleep...

Later that evening when Joyce gets home, she sees Will sitting with El’s diorama at the table, though it looks like her project has seen better days.

“Hey guys. Mm, smells good in here,” Joyce comments with a smile to Jonathan, who stands at the stove making dinner. On the nights that he’s home before her, he tries to at least cook dinner and help El with her homework in hopes to take some pressure off his mom. “I thought El was finished with that,” Joyce nods to the diorama. “Wasn’t she supposed to present it today?” She shrugs out of her jacket and hangs it up.

“Yeah… she did. It’s just that it kind of accidentally got a little banged up,” Will explains without all the details. He would save that for El to tell Joyce if she wants to, though Joyce is immediately suspicious. “I just wanted to fix it for her because I know she worked really hard on it,” Will adds with a simple shrug.

“Well, that’s very kind of you, sweetie,” Joyce smiles at him. She looks to the living room but sees that it’s empty. “Where is El?”

“Oh, uh, I guess she kind of had a rough day. She’s been in her bedroom since we got home,” Jonathan explains, urging his mom to go check on her without so many words. “Dinner is almost ready too if you want to tell her,” he adds.

“Got it,” Joyce nods, heading down the hallway. El’s _rough days_ seem more and more frequent, and Joyce is starting to feel more than a little guilty over it.

She’s the one who ripped her away from her only home and friends. She’s the one who insists she goes to classes that she may not really be ready for.

Hell, she’s the one who’s ultimately responsible for the loss of her only parent.

Joyce tries to hide the guilt the best she can for the sake of the kids, but it’s all starting to wear on her as well.

Outside El’s bedroom door, there’s no music or tv, only silence. Joyce knocks lightly, but no one answers. She tries one more time. “El, hon, can you just answer me so that I know you are okay in there?”

Still nothing.

In a nervous desperation, Joyce opens the door a crack, and _thank god_ , finds that El is just sleeping, though it nearly breaks her heart when she sees her. She’s half in her closet on the floor and wrapped up in one of Hop’s jacket. Joyce debates leaving her there but decides to at least help her get into bed if she wants to keep sleeping. School seems to physically and mentally exhaust her, and Joyce genuinely understands the need for an occasional extra-long night’s sleep, even if it is only 6 pm.

Joyce kneels down next to El and catches a book open on the floor next to her. She picks the book up and smiles when she sees that it’s Winnie the Pooh. But it’s the particular story that it’s open to that causes her to pause for a moment… 

_‘Oh Pooh,’ says Christopher Robin. ‘If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there’s something you must remember.’_

_‘And what might that be, Christopher Robin’, asks Pooh._

_‘You are braver than you believe, stronger than you feel, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we are apart, I'll always be with you.’_

_“One more?” El asks softly, tears lining her eyes._

_“I think we have to go now, kid,” Hopper whispers, gently placing a kiss on the top of her head. El nods in understanding. She knows her time with Hopper is limited because it’s getting darker all around them and his image is growing a bit fuzzy._

_“I wish you could stay,” she tells him solemnly._

_“Me too. But you know that it’s all true, right? You are the bravest, strongest, smartest kid I know. And even if we aren’t together, I promise I am always with you.”_

_El hugs him even tighter. “I love you,” she tells him even though everything has gone black and she’s not certain he’s still there._

_“I love you too kid.”_

El wakes with a deep inhale and looks around her bedroom, realizing where she is.

“Hi sweetie, sorry to wake you up,” Joyce apologizes to a confused El. She sweeps the hair from El’s tired eyes and nods to her bed. “You can keep sleeping if you want to. Jonathan mentioned you had a long day,” she gently probes for information.

El sees the open book in Joyce’s hand and smiles at it.

“I did,” El sighs. “But… I think I’m feeling a little better now.” She looks to Joyce and gives her an honest smile. El stretches her legs out and folds up Hopper’s jacket, carefully placing it back in the box.

"Dinner is almost finished," Joyce tells her, glad to see that El is in okay spirits.

“It smells yummy,” El comments, standing up to head to her door.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Joyce agrees. She turns off El’s bedroom lights and lays the book down on her dresser next to the single picture of her and Hop, though not before smiling briefly when she sees his face. It’s the only picture of him displayed in the entire house and despite all they’ve been through, it feels like that night was only yesterday.

_Much farther away in a cold, dark cell, Hopper wakes up with a startled gasp searching the room for his daughter. When he realizes where he is, he lets out an exhausted, despondent groan and lays back down._

_These goddamn hallucinations were beginning to feel a bit too real..._


End file.
